Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

Notes 175
any true proposition, then from a self-contradictory hypothesis H you can
derive both E and not-E. So H could be falsifi ed by any true proposition E
simply by deriving not-E from H. This implies that if a self-contradictory
hypothesis fails to explain, this is not because it has too little empirical content,
but because it has too much.
74. The more radical advocates of paraconsistent logic, such as Graham Priest,
argue that there can exist true contradictions. But I understand this to be a
controversial view even among paraconsistent logicians.
75. Musgrave, Essays on Realism, 223. Mark Colyvan (“The Ontological Commitments
of Inconsistent Theories,” 119) has recently made a similar point,
arguing that while consistency may be regarded as a theoretical virtue, it
does not necessarily trump all other virtues.
76. Davidson, “Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” 12.
77. A related question, to which I shall return (3.2.1), is whether there can exist
singular causal explanations.
78. Grünbaum, “Creation as Pseudo-Explanation,” 234–35.
79. Danto, “Basic Actions,” 142; Swinburne, Existence of God, 35–36, 49.
80. I am grateful to Alan Musgrave for pointing out this implication of Grünbaum’s
argument.
81. Lewis, “Causation,” 163–67.
82. Psillos, Causation and Explanation, 100–101.
83. Mackie, Cement of the Universe, 29–58.
84. Leftow (Time and Eternity, 292–95) applies a modifi ed version of Lewis’s
counterfactual theory of causation to the question of whether a timeless God
can cause temporal events. (For Leftow’s modifi cations of Lewis’s account,
see ibid., 258, 294.)
85. A belief no longer universally shared by physicists: see, for instance, Steinhardt
and Turok, “A Cyclic Model of the Universe,” 1436–39.
86. Smith, “Causation,” 169.
87. As I noted a moment ago, the belief is no longer universal: some physicists
(such as Steinhardt and Turok [“A Cyclic Model of the Universe,” 1436–
39]) argue that our universe emerged from a pre-existing universe by way of
something like a “big crunch.”
88. Smith, “Causation,” 171.
89. Ibid., 171–72.
90. Ducasse, Causation and the Types of Necessity, 79.
91. Smith, “Causation,”173.
92. Lewis, “Causation,” 170.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid.
95. Smith, “Causation,” 176.
96. Ibid.
97. This is an instance of what David Stove calls, in an article of the same name,
“misconditionalisation.” For one could construct a valid argument for (3)
□ E if the initial condition (1) were G ⊃ □ E.
98. I am grateful to Alan Musgrave for pointing this out.
99. Smith, “Causation,” 178.
100. Ibid.
101. Swinburne, Existence of God, 320.
102. Here I follow Swinburne (Existence of God, 78) and understand a complete
explanation to be one which cites all the causal factors which were contributing
to the production of the explanandum at the time it occurred.
103. Swinburne (Existence of God, 25, 76–77) makes precisely this point, the
only difference being that he speaks of full explanations which are not complete
explanations.